there's a sad song in this
by sonofon
Summary: gen, WWII  Elizaveta can't heal hearts, but there's always morphine.


The boy had a slender figure and a uniform two sizes too big. His gaunt face was deprived of nutrient and health. His breathing was labored and haggard; every second he made a great attempt to not cry out and every second his eyes showed the pain he dared not cry out. "He won't make it," Miss Van Campden whispered but she did not have to be told. A great majority of the soldiers who arrived at the hospital never left. It was just a fact.

How do you confront an inevitable ending? The boy was hers for an hour, and she went straight to work, injecting morphine into the first vein she found. He cursed and bit down on his lip. He was running a high fever, a stomach infection, and all the girl had was morphine.

Blood flow was unstoppable. Bandages from Cecelia were retrieved but it kept coming, a penetrating front, a steady assault. At home, the boy would be brought into surgery and promptly operated on. Here, in Milan, they were understaffed with the only doctor off in Lake Como tending to his overrun clinic.

"I—I can't," cried the soldier.

"Please, please, just wait for the morphine." She brought out another dose of morphine and wanted to wait for him to pass off before administering it. She wiped his forehead with a wet cloth and tried a few more soothing words.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

"You will not," said the nurse, who had earlier closed the eyes of four soldiers. "You will get through this."

"I'm not. I'm going to die in this pit and I'm going to be dead. I'm going to be dead. I'm going to—"

This was the point of desperation, the climax. For a soldier to realize his situation is futile he must be in agonizing pain, and hopeless. For most, life ended here. The young soldier under her care seemed to segue into that stage. He was a dead man breathing. He shed a few tears but stopped because his chest cavity seemed on the verge of rupture with every heave.

"How long, nurse?"

She wondered if she should tell him. It was different from soldier to soldier, from rank to rank. Those who ranked lower seemed to possess a heightened awareness of their lost humanity. They, after all, had no history textbook awaiting them. She shook her head. He was just a boy. (They all were.)

"Go to sleep," she said.

"If I do, I'll die."

"You'll get rest. It's good for you."

"I'm going to rest forever," he coughed out the words in harsh Italian. "I don't need to start now."

"Please don't be silly."

"Stop it! Don't say 'please'. This is a war. Manners only get you killed." He cried and muttered a few words, a hail Mary. In a few minutes, he was asleep. The nurse shot him with a stronger dose of the drug.

"This will help," she said.

An hour later, the boy came to. Dazed and lost, he thought he was in heaven. I've died and I've just met my first angel. It was only the nurse but he had forgotten about her. Faced again with his savior, he, like many soldiers on their deathbed, fell in love.

He wanted a name. Elizaveta chose not to oblige. It was bad form to complicate death with names. Even a false name was no good because the dying soldier would keep that name close to his heart and she did not want a fake occupying a place reserved for family and home. Deeply conflicted by her daily life, she had chosen to retreat into a shell of ambivalence and it was as such that she presented herself to her dying patients.

She was reminded, however, of a soldier whom she had once loved in return. His ailment was injury by shellfire, nothing life threatening. They were in Pisa. His name was Arthur and he was an Englishman. Older than the average soldier, he had been enlisted as a mechanic before circumstances deemed he join the fray as well.

"See this cast?" he says in her mind. "It's my love letter to the British government."

"But when you're healed, then what?" she says. "You don't take back a letter."

"Then I start a new letter. The government must be informed at all times of my activity. They get off on it. See, that's why we're still fighting. They can't get enough of it."

She works during the day so their times together come only at night. She sits at his bedside to stroke his hair and make fun of his eyebrows. He tells her quaint English fairytales. Sometimes he makes up stories on the spot. He has a talent for words; when he goes home, he'd like to go to Oxford to study English literature. She, in return, listens. It's soothing to sit still rather than run about all day looking at blood and fatal infections. Arthur knows this. She tells Arthur about the village where she grew up. Every so often, he makes a scowling reference to a former French schoolmate and she comes to know Francis Bonnefoy as well as he does. They laugh and look into each other's eyes without fear. There are no lies; Arthur's too cynical and Elizaveta's tired. She knows what they have cannot last. He, perhaps, knows as well. One night, she slips in beside him under the sheets.

"It's warmer than I imagined," she laughs, and claps her hand over her mouth lest the head nurse hears or stumbles upon them. Arthur reaches for her other hand and kisses it.

"For someone who works so hard, you have such soft hands," he murmurs, and lies on top of her. He touches her face and leans in. She laughs his name into his shoulder. He tickles her. Later she cries and Arthur doesn't know what to do so he says, "Shh, shh, don't worry because we've got it all."

They continue to sleep together. They enjoy the pleasure. Weeks turn into months. She beckons him closer, as if tell a secret. She whispers, "I'm in love with you." Arthur whispers back.

During the day she wheels him on the outskirts of the hospital. They come to a twenty-foot tall brick wall. There is a small crevice near Arthur's level. He tells her to wheel him closer. With his mouth close to the opening, he begins to whisper. He doesn't tell her what he says because "that's not the point. You tell secrets to walls because you can't tell anyone else. No, it's not a matter of trust. Some things aren't meant to be said aloud, that's all."

When Arthur heals, he is sent to Germany. No letter is sent to Elizaveta to inform her of his death but one day her gut hurts like hell and her heart feels bruised. She throws up. She realizes that, somewhere out there, he's dead; he'll never return. She finds out she is pregnant. She loses the baby. She never hears from him again.

It was the boy's determination that reminded her of Arthur. It wasn't unusual. And soldiers were always so tragically determined. All sadness reminded her, in some way, of Arthur. People left but they engraved themselves on your skin and if they were important enough, they entered your heart. Without warning, her heart was flooded with memories and she disliked this boy because of that.

It wasn't his fault. Two hours later the stubborn fellow was still alive. His temperature had dropped and the morphine had eased a portion of the pain. She knew he was still hurting because every so often his head shook, uneasy and uncontrollable.

"Where does it hurt now?" she asked.

"Everywhere. I'm alive but I don't know why."

"You're doing wonderfully."

"I—I can't feel anything anymore."

"Shh, shh," she said.

"Is this what the end feels like?" Faced with a love he could never consummate, he confessed that he was in love. He wanted to kiss her. She almost wanted to slap him. But you don't slap dying soldiers.

"Be reasonable," Elizaveta said, leaving out the 'please' just in time. "I'm just a nurse." I'm just a girl who feels as broken as you truly are. I look fine on the surface but I'm not a saint. I'm a wind-up doll bound to fall off the shelf.

The boy reached for her hand and held it to his chest. He took a deep breath and coughed up blood and phlegm. She wiped him clean.

"You won't tell me your name," said the poor boy. "I'll tell you mine. I always wanted to die for my country but I didn't think it'd really happen. Tell it to the General. My brother is dead and I kept fighting. I did the soldier's duty. Tell him Lovino Vargas did his duty."

So he died with his hand gripped tightly in hers. His grasp gradually eased. Elizaveta had seen too many boys die to feel anything beyond a brief numbing. She closed his eyes and threw a white sheet over his body.


End file.
